IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ecnote/v42y2013i1p1-17.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Incentives and Voluntary Investment in Employer Shares

Author

Listed:
  • Issouf Soumaré

Abstract

type="main" xml:lang="en"> Using a partial equilibrium model, this paper makes a first attempt to provide an explanation based on rational behaviour for the basic big puzzle of why workers have large holdings of the shares of their employer in their defined contribution (DC) pension plans. The primary explanations in the literature seem to be behavioural ones that involve sub-optimal behaviour. This paper attempts to see how far a standard optimizing setting in a principal–agent type framework can go in explaining the same phenomenon. It uses an incentive approach involving two agents, senior managers and workers to show how portfolio weights can be voluntarily shifted away from what would be first best in the absence of an incentive problem.

Suggested Citation

  • Issouf Soumaré, 2013. "Incentives and Voluntary Investment in Employer Shares," Economic Notes, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA, vol. 42(1), pages 1-17, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecnote:v:42:y:2013:i:1:p:1-17
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/ecno.12000
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nellie Liang & Scott Weisbenner, 2002. "Investor Behavior and the Purchase of Company Stock in 401(k) Plans - The Importance of Plan Design," NBER Working Papers 9131, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Richard H. Thaler & Shlomo Benartzi, 2001. "Naive Diversification Strategies in Defined Contribution Saving Plans," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(1), pages 79-98, March.
    3. Shlomo Benartzi, 2001. "Excessive Extrapolation and the Allocation of 401(k) Accounts to Company Stock," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(5), pages 1747-1764, October.
    4. Oyer, Paul & Schaefer, Scott, 2005. "Why do some firms give stock options to all employees?: An empirical examination of alternative theories," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 99-133, April.
    5. Holmstrom, Bengt & Milgrom, Paul, 1987. "Aggregation and Linearity in the Provision of Intertemporal Incentives," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(2), pages 303-328, March.
    6. HOLMSTROM, Bengt, 1979. "Moral hazard and observability," LIDAM Reprints CORE 379, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    7. Holmstrom, Bengt & Milgrom, Paul, 1991. "Multitask Principal-Agent Analyses: Incentive Contracts, Asset Ownership, and Job Design," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 7(0), pages 24-52, Special I.
    8. Meulbroek, Lisa, 2005. "Company Stock in Pension Plans: How Costly Is It?," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 48(2), pages 443-474, October.
    9. Bengt Holmstrom, 1979. "Moral Hazard and Observability," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 74-91, Spring.
    10. Gerald Garvey & Todd Milbourn, 2003. "Incentive Compensation When Executives Can Hedge the Market: Evidence of Relative Performance Evaluation in the Cross Section," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(4), pages 1557-1582, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Oyer, Paul & Schaefer, Scott, 2011. "Personnel Economics: Hiring and Incentives," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 20, pages 1769-1823, Elsevier.
    2. Alex Edmans & Xavier Gabaix, 2016. "Executive Compensation: A Modern Primer," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 54(4), pages 1232-1287, December.
    3. David Martimort & Flavio Menezes & Myrna Wooders & ELISABETTA IOSSA & DAVID MARTIMORT, 2015. "The Simple Microeconomics of Public-Private Partnerships," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 17(1), pages 4-48, February.
    4. Elisabetta Iossa & David Martimort, 2012. "Risk allocation and the costs and benefits of public--private partnerships," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 43(3), pages 442-474, September.
    5. Edward P. Lazear, 1995. "Personnel Economics," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262121883, December.
    6. Yoon K. Choi, 2020. "Does executive compensation reflect corporate productivity?," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(7-8), pages 1012-1033, July.
    7. Arifovic, Jasmina & Karaivanov, Alexander, 2010. "Learning by doing vs. learning from others in a principal-agent model," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(10), pages 1967-1992, October.
    8. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2373-2437 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Oindrila Dey & Swapnendu Banerjee, 2022. "Incentives, Status and Thereafter: A Critical Survey," South Asian Journal of Macroeconomics and Public Finance, , vol. 11(1), pages 95-115, June.
    10. He, Zhiguo & Xiong, Wei, 2013. "Delegated asset management, investment mandates, and capital immobility," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(2), pages 239-258.
    11. de, Vries Frans & Franckx, Laurent, 2012. "A Note on Organizational Design and the Optimal Allocation of Environmental Liability," Stirling Economics Discussion Papers 2012-09, University of Stirling, Division of Economics.
    12. Stanimir Morfov & Manuel Santos, 2017. "A Model of Managerial Talent: Addressing Some Puzzles in CEO Compensation," Working Papers 2017-03, University of Miami, Department of Economics.
    13. Pierre Chaigneau & Nicolas Sahuguet, "undated". "The structure of CEO pay: pay-for-luck and stock-options," FMG Discussion Papers dp713, Financial Markets Group.
    14. Hsuan-Chi Chen & Christine W. Lai & Sheng-Ching Wu, 2016. "Plan-Level and Firm-Level Attributes and Employees' Contributions to 401(k) Plans," International Journal of Business and Economics, School of Management Development, Feng Chia University, Taichung, Taiwan, vol. 15(1), pages 17-33, June.
    15. Hooper, Louise, 2008. "Paying for performance: Uncertainty, asymmetric information and the payment model," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 157-163, January.
    16. Jed Devaro & Fidan Ana Kurtulus, 2010. "An Empirical Analysis of Risk, Incentives and the Delegation of Worker Authority," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 63(4), pages 641-661, July.
    17. Leon Yang Chu & David E.M. Sappington, 2009. "Implementing high‐powered contracts to motivate intertemporal effort supply," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 40(2), pages 296-316, June.
    18. Page, T. Beau, 2018. "CEO attributes, compensation, and firm value: Evidence from a structural estimation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(2), pages 378-401.
    19. Laurent Franckx & Frans P. Vries & Ben White, 2022. "A note on organizational structure and environmental liability," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 24(2), pages 173-193, April.
    20. Evans, Shane, 2010. "Innovation contracts with leakage through licensing," Working Papers 10282, University of Tasmania, Tasmanian School of Business and Economics, revised 05 Oct 2010.
    21. Francine Lafontaine & Margaret E. Slade, 1998. "Incentive Contracting and the Franchise Decision," NBER Working Papers 6544, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ecnote:v:42:y:2013:i:1:p:1-17. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley-Blackwell Digital Licensing or Christopher F. Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0391-5026 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.